May 5, 2021 Meeting of Social Science

Agenda not yet available.

Present: Chris Bailey, Jess Hagman, Cindy Ingold, Carissa Phillips, Lisa Romero, Nancy O’Brien, Yoo-Seong Song

Guests: Sanga Sung, Visiting Government Documents Librarian; Chris Prom, AUL for Digital Strategies

1.  Approval of February 3 minutes (see g:/social sciences division/minutes/draft minutes)
   • Minutes were approved as amended.
2.  Announcements and Discussion Items:

• Sanga Sung, Visiting Government Documents Librarian, joined us at 10:30 to discuss the work she has been doing since she joined the library last summer. She has been assessing the collection, working on a virtual government documents exhibit, and updating LibGuides.  She is available to work with all of us on instruction and reference questions.  Various SSD members discussed the needs for government information from members of the departments, colleges, and units they work with.
• Chris Prom, AUL for Digital Strategies, joined us as 11 a.m. to check in.
• Nancy mentioned that there was a gap in the administration now about who to ask about various staffing/unit policy issues, because we no longer have an AUL for Services. We are lacking oversight for the nitty gritty operational issues. Chris acknowledged this and said we can always bring concerns to him, Mary Laskowski, and HR.
• Library administration has been discussing back to work plans for the summer.  SSHEL will be open the second summer term from 1-4, Monday- Friday.  The Communications Library may be open as well.  Chris said the library is waiting to hear back from campus about support including WSAs.
• Finally, Chris discussed changes coming to Communication 9, the guiding document from campus on faculty promotion and tenure.  The library will need to be flexible with faculty who are coming up in the next few years as we navigate changes.  We will also be looking at our own statement on promotion and tenue, as well as possibly combining our two librarianship statements into one statement.

3. Reports

• Collection Development Committee (Ingold)
  Cindy will send an email to the division about desiderata items for this year. CDC has also been discussing budget shortages for FY23.  Here are highlights from the January CDC meeting about this:
  • The Library can cover inflation increases for FY22, but in doing so, will eliminate the “rainy day” funds that have been built up over time. Once spent, it is highly unlikely that this money will be replaced by an additional infusion of resources. There is approximately $640K in the fund, and inflation should be approximately $600K.
  • Tom has been asking the divisions for suggestions of how to cover inflation for FY23. He received one e-mail suggesting that divisions use their zero funds and eliminate using the central fund for one year. This is possible; however, these funds are unlikely to be replaced.  Once spent, they are gone. That would, effectively, mean that there would be no additional funding added to the central fund (e.g. ‘approvals’).
  • Suggestion to use gift or endowment funds to fill in the gaps by reducing allocations to disciplinary areas with endowment funding. Possible, but need to check for purchasing restrictions.
  • Library has ongoing contracts that cannot be changed. This needs to be taken into consideration when budget planning and constrains what we can do with many journal and database subscriptions.
  • Esra and Vera pulling data on high cost, low use items, specifically with EBSCO. Decisions may need to be made by subject specialists (as in the past) with data provided as a starting point.
  • Currently, there is no intention to give divisions flat reduction percentages. This would be very hard to justify in some subject areas.

In other CDC news, Wendy has been busy with several license renewals.

• Diversity Committee (Ingold)
  • Committee is finishing the grant project on Becoming a Trans Inclusive Library.  The committee will give an update at the May hangout.  We are planning for a retreat later in the summer.

• Faculty Review Committee (Ingold)
  • FRC has completed annual report scoring; letters to all faculty might be about one week later this year.
  • Also finished evaluations of 4Y and 5Y Peer Review Committee Reports.

• Reference Management Team (Hagman)
  • RMT is working on the GA training schedule for August; some training may be outdoors.  Jen Chien Yu reported that chats were up this year and directional questions were down. Referrals to specific libraries can be difficult; libraries are encouraged to create short videos to help with this.

• Central Public Services Division rep (Phillips)
  • CPS did not meet in April. At the March meeting, Becky Smith noted the budget challenges that library collections will face in FY23.
• Organizational Development & Training Committee (Ingold)
  • ODTC has been busy this semester with training sessions on Zoom and Alma; working with Heather Murphy to clarify information about what employees can do on non-instruction days; and meeting with Susan Breckenridge, the new Assistant Dean for Human Resources. ODT has been creating onboarding training for new unit heads.

4. Round Robin

There was no round robin because of lack of time.